Google might dump Intel

Long-term Intel customer, Google is thinking of dumping the fashion bag maker and start making its own chips based around ARM designs. Initially the news was that Google was looking at dropping Intel’s chips for its server farms in favour of ARM chips and was following a similar plan to Facebook.

Now the word on the street is that Google might even take the move further. The dark satanic rumour mill suggests that Google might enter the chip business itself. This is because if Google were to use ARM architecture it would licence the core and then design the rest of the chip oneself. This means that Google could end up creating specialist chips for its huge server farms which someone else might want. Others might want the designs because they would be specifically tailored for bleeding edge data farms.

Intel’s chips are less specialised because they have to fill wider markets. Google chips would have the advantage that ARM chips uses less energy at least until Intel catches up. If Google does go ahead with the moves, then it will take a while before we see Googlechips for sale as any data centre product.

Intel has a few years to become organised and if it does then Google will probably walk away from the idea. After all even if it did develop a useful chip, it would have to keep spending money to keep development going. If Chipzilla pulled finger then Google would probably leave the development to someone else.